My day

Soo... its -21 in kitchener (the area that I live in) with the wind chill... flipping freezing!!! but actually I have felt worse believe it or not.... so the news you are all dying to hear :P I took my canadian citizenship test this morning, 20 multiple choice questions 2 of which I had to get correct and another 1 out of 3 I had to get right.. I scored 19 out 0f 20 alhamdulillah.. still not really understanding the one I got wrong but oh well, I passed and thats the main thing. Now I just have to wait for a letter asking me to attend the ceremony some time in April insha'allah. Just wanted to let you all know :D Thanks for the duaa

Interview with someone who gives thanks to Allah

City sisters on the Islam Channel

Just came across this website for sisters in UK who have the islam channel on their sky.. looks pretty cool. Check it out and lemme know what you think. A few modern classic, covering ladies showing the world what we as women can do masha'allah, may they be rewarded for their efforts insha'allah

Bombay dreams

Another cheesy song.. but I watched this musical and I loved it.. just wanted to share with you all

Hijab argument with myself

Gareth Gates

I was just chatting with a friend online when I heard this playing on 'the Kumars at no 42' and I was reminded when it first came out in 2003 (i think) He was a bit of a star when I was at uni cause hes from Bradford.. I wonder whats happened to him now. Anyways, this is a music video to warn those who want to stay away :D Enjoy

Sunday

What I did today: well I stayed at my mums sunday night after not seeing her for quite some time now. I had the full intention when I was driving down on saturday to tell her my plans to move back to UK... alas, i still couldnt face it. I really dont know whats wrong with me and it frustrates me no end!!! I can face up to anyone, except for my own mother, not only does it frustrate me but it also shames me sometimes that Ive allowed her to have this amount of control over my life.

I spoke to my family in UK too, I phoned up my grandad and spoke to 2 of my cousins, my auntie and eventually my grandad :P alhamdulillah everyone is doing fine, although I was told the ambulance was called out the middle of last week for my grandad who had a bad cough and started having pains in his chest (he has severe angina, so it was a necessary call) Hes ok though alhamdulillah. He asked me when I was coming back to the UK, my dads family all know of my want to come back, I told him I didnt know (which I dont, officially) then I asked him when he was coming over here :) although I dont know how things would work out, Allahu alim (God knows best) Then when I got off the phone my mum asked me 'I thought you werent going back to UK this year, I hear you say..... and say this.. ' *rolls eyes* Insha'allah this will all be over with soon.

Anyways we ate... yummy... nice roast dinner, then I set off for home after doing some revision for my test this week. I drove down to meet up with a friend from where I used to live, I miss this girl so much... she had started to give me arabic lessons while I was living in mississauga but it wasnt meant to be.. she still means loads to me even if we dont see each other that often. I picked her up and we went to Tim Hortons for some tea... we got the drinks, then sat down and tried to put the world to right.... she has a friend who just took off her hijab and its affecting her, then we discussed other people who have taken it off and how things were with them.. its all so heartaching sometimes... but God knows best and knows their intentions insha'allah. ... now its time for me to get back to my surah and my test revision insha'allah.

Fi amenallah
Peace and salams, Ammena

Amir Sulaiman

Enjoy :) Masha'allah... listen to those words

Chicago

Just a few comments about my time in Chicago, it all started to go downhill when I mentioned to the american immigration lady that I have never been to Chicago before. That was when her questions started, 'so who do you know in Chicago?' 'how long have you known her?' 'how long has she lived there?' 'Shes already married?' some people!! anyways got through that ok alhamdulillah, and even managed to get into Chicago without having to show my non hijab passport photo to a man :P alhamdulillah. Then I eventually got into Chicago and was surprised at the number of muslims I didnt see... I mean its a fairly big city and in my whole 4 days there I saw, erm... 5 muslims no 6... bearing in mind thats 2 sisters with each other (twice) and one guy who salamed me at the airport leaving. But, from the 2 groups of 2 sisters, one of the girls salamed me, which was nice... much cosier than when I was in London when no girl would even look at me to give me the chance to receive or give barakah for a salam, Allahu alim.
I think I got a few stares and some comments, but as usual I was in my own little bubble... I just hope it didnt make my friend uncomfortable although she didnt mention anything to me. On my way back in Chicago airport before I went through the metal detectors, the guy who was telling me to take off my shoes actually mimiced my hijab and told me in question form 'you can not take this off?' sometimes I get annoyed at silly questions like this... but I have to remind myself that not everyone understands the reasoning behind it. Then he shouts for some woman and tells me to wait over there, so the lady comes and tells me she has to search me because the contours of my body are concealed. This actually made me smile because that was the whole point of the outfit :p heehee, she even asked if I was ok doing this in public or would I like to go somewhere else which I thought was nice... anyways, that happened which was ok.
I told one of you that my mum had asked me to get her a bottle of Vodka in the airport, even though she knows I dont drink shes like... well Im not asking you to drink it, so I told her it depended on my time schedule... then I was intending on telling her I was running too late to stop. I got into the terminal and subhanallah.. I couldnt find the duty free store anywhere!!! alhamdulillah. I mean it! no perfume, no chocs, no alcohol, I was so happy lol :D
Anyways, Ive just got back from Jummah and now its time to get myself sorted for work :P
Peace and Salams, Ammena

Im back

Salams everyone out there,
so yes Im back in Canada after 4 days out in the windy city of Chicago, although it wasnt really windy at all. The weather was amazing, cold on my first day and it rained a little but on sunday it was 9degrees and thats celcius!!! whereas in my city I believe it was freezing rain. Ive uploaded my pics onto facebook for those who I know more so you can check them all out there and I will upload some onto this blog too after Ive told you a little about my time over there.

I had an amazing time, first of all I realised that Ive known this girl for nearly 8 years now and that I havent seen her for about 6 of those since my second year of university, I went on placement then she went on placement then I left for Canada. However, we had such fun and you wouldnt believe that we hadnt seen each other in so long. We remembered the good times about uni, and the bad times, we tried to place everyone in our living block, we complained about the people who we lived with, we talked about the places we used to frequent, the new things that changed in the city after I left (she was there for 1yr after I left) We chatted about how things have changed in our lives since then, how much we miss university or perhaps just the studying and having that routine, we talked about the summers and how the sun always fitted into our studying routine.

It amazed me at how comfortable I still was around her and her around me, when we first met in the airport my hijab didnt phase her at all. All throughout the 4 days she asked me questions I find people are normally too shy to ask, but she knows me and knows my character that I ask questions and I want ppl to talk to me rather than bottling things up. She asked me about my hijab, how I wear it and where I get them from, it always amuses me that people think we have to buy scarves in certain shops when pashminas are still so widely used in the world for visual and fashion reasons :) She even wasnt phased when I would casually slip in, 'ok, so then I will pray and then we can blah' I suppose she is used to the praying, she mentioned her next door neighbour used to wake her up in Bradford with his praying :P I even talked to her husband about Islam (hes jewish) and covered some things he thought was islamic like female circumcision. So was nice to out his mind to rest, and he even asked me a question to ask 'muslims' he wanted to know about our books, you know when we say 'its written' and we talked about destiny and stuff.. so he asked if everything is written what would happen to the person who had killed Hitler as a child? My answer? I told him it wouldnt be good as the killing of a child is not good. His point was, well if this childs destiny is to kill all these people then to get rid of him early would be good, no? and I told him even though his destiny may be written, who are we to know that but he kept going back to the child being Hitler.. he just couldnt get past that, and that bothers me sometimes when people keep going back to the same point. Anyways...

We saw so much stuff over there, even things that my friend has never seen before which was nice. We saw the bean (the silver metal looking thing) the field museum, the Modern Day Ice Exhibition, the oriental institute, the sears tower, these were the things we went to see... but I also saw the soldiers field, Navy pier, the aquarium. We tottered around downtown chicago and around the university of Chicago for awhile too, did tons of tourist shopping and on Monday we went to the shopping centre and I bought a ton of stuff from Abercrombie & Fitch :D heehee.

My day

First of all let me tell you about the company that I work for. So once you have worked for this company for 1 full year, you become involved in their profit sharing scheme where they take a percentage of their total profits for the year and divide it amongst the employees. Everyone gets the money as a percentage of their earnings and noone can earn over a certain amount from the profit sharing so this reduces the fat cats getting all the money. Anyways, I started this job November 2006, so this year I was entitled to 2 months profit sharing which totalled to be just over $2000 masha'allah :P now in order to get this money a percentage has to go into a pension plan, some has to go directly to you (minus taxes of course) and the rest you can choose to go to either... I opted for the money heehee, so in total I will be receiving just under $1800 minus the tax so Im quite pleased with that. So in my one on one interview the bosses told me if I had been there the whole year the figure would have been more like $14,000 subhanallah can you believe it. Anyways, on my drive home I started thinking well maybe I could talk to h2b about it and see if I could stay over here until january next year to get the full amount. This probably sounds like I would be asking his permission, but it so isnt like that because I miss him more than anything, but this would be a little savings nest for us... then I thought more about it and thought, well if I got a job in UK it would probably be the same as being over here for that amount of time.

So my day carried on in a random and quick blur and it came time to get ready for work, I decided to pick up my post on the way out instead of picking it up when I get home from work usually. I had 2 letters :) oooh, the excitement lol, then I realised one of them was one of those 'congratulations random person who we are choosing to annoy' so I threw it in the bin and noticed the other one was from the canadian immigration and citizenship department. I walked over to my car and started it up, then opened the letter for a quick look to see there in big bold letters NOTICE TO APPEAR - TO WRITE A CITIZENSHIP TEST yes I have been called to take my test at the end of February insha'allah... I truly think this is a sign, what dya reckon? To be thinking about staying in Canada for a little while longer, not for my deen but for dunya things and then to be one step closer to being able to fulfil half of my deen by moving away and getting married... subhanallah... Im so excited I could burst, but now Im nervous about taking the test, its so close and with me being away this weekend (which im still very excited about :P) I dunno when I will study, and I havent studied in sooo long.

Anyways, thats how my day went :D alhamdulilah
Peace and salams, Ammena

For Kate

As promised, a nice few sun pictures of London

Turkey lifts hijab ban at schools

Alhamdulillah... check out the article here

Boarding

I went boarding today :) left my place about 1ish all ready and sorted. Got new gloves (well bought them a few years ago just forgot about em) so no more brushin snow of wooley mittens, got cup of tea to warm me a little before starting, got my camera. Drove over to the slopes using a different route cause I was coming from a different direction, nearly there then my tyres go over the snow in the wrong way. Imagine this... there are 2 lines in the road that all the other cars have removed the snow with, so Im following that but then it seems to move to one side so i try to keep straight then I totally feel my tyres skidding underneath me, winter tyres my bottom!!! But i prayed and said no, on no, please no.. for a very long time and alhamdulillah Im back on track. Anyways I get to the slope, sort myself out while waiting for my friend... Im freezing my bum off at this point cause Im not moving (-15 and thats without the wind chill) then she arrives, we get our lift passes and head over to the slopes. Walk up 'my slope' as my friend has named it :P as in ammenas slope :D get to the very top and realise its really icey, to the point that im trying to stand and my board is sliding away from me. So we move to the lower level and get on track.... I get up and start moving my way down the slope, I feel more in control but Im still having issues with why things do what they do. Like I know what I want to do, I want to move in the opposite direction, so I try to shift my weight to the other leg but the board still travels that direction towards the trees, then I panic and just fall to my bum. Then at other times, Im totally not thinking and try to shimmy over to the other direction and I go, but it happens so quickly I dont know how I did it. Anyways I got to the bottom probably with falling twice, although it wasnt really falling it was more not being able to do what I wanted to do so I purposely fell. I was pretty impressed and my friend even said she wasnt expecting that heehee which was nice to hear. Then Im taking the board off my feet, as in getting out of the bindings and I hear a noise, I look down to see this black strap and to my horror I realise the binding that keeps my left toes in place has snapped off. We were both totally gutted, cut long story short.... my friend went to the other slopes while I went off to rent a board, wasnt ideal but we had only been there for like 30mins if that. So I walk to the shack and it says in big letters, we dont take debit cards as deposit, what do I have?! My debit card :( so Im off to wait for my friend. When she arrives she says, its probably a good idea the wind was really picking up and she said she found it hard to stand on the other slopes cause the wind was blowing from behind her and pushing. I was just soo frustrated though :( especially after such a good start and now with me going to chicago next weekend I will have to wait 2 weeks to be able to go :( Insha'allah it will work out though.

My first arabic reading class

It was supposed to be today... Kate, remember what we were talking about with my procrastination? well my computer shut itself off about 5 mins before my class was due to start and I didnt realise, to get it up at running at 1232 when my lesson was at 1230... its 1250 now and no sign of the ppl on skype.... I dont think its just to do with my computer shutting off because I see no 'add member' dialog box... hmm.... Allahu alim :)

Ooooh

so today we were talking about meat and some guy i work with mentioned that you can buy halal pork, I wasnt totally listening to him but I caught the jist.. I was like.... what did you say?? Subhanallah.. I knew he was joking but what is the point of a joke if it isnt funny and its totally false?? This guys surname is Islam, I cant remember where hes from, but he asks me for his wife when Eid was and proceeds to tell people he doesnt really believe in one religion... Allahu alim.

Update on arabic reading

Salam everyone,

so some of you may remember that I signed up for a weeks trial at the RIS convention for learning to read the quran, eventually they tracked me down :) alhamdulillah and insha'allah I start on friday. Im a little nervous, its through skype like with the classes through umm hibaat so at least this will start me off. I will do the weeks trial on friday, monday and wednesday, its usually over one week but because I go to CHICAGO next friday I wont be here for it so they allowed me to start this friday 12.30 - 1pm I was surprised that its only 30 mins... how can I decide if its beneficial after only 90mins of lessons. Allahu alim. We will see and I will let you all know, if youre in Canada or USA feel free to check out the link by clicking on the heading title.

Im a muslim!!